I’d agree with the notion that some skills are just not fun to level with, but it is important to state that this is a personal bias. Players will want to level A certain way, each having their own definition of what is an acceptable way.
I dislike leveling with runes, any physical base skill (FW, BA, etc), auto attacking builds, retaliation, Pet’s, and slow to recast non pet player scaling skills (ST, WD).
Circuit breakers are great for new players when leveling but I hardly use them outside of endgame. Piloting would have to save my ass from the bum rush you described.
Multiple damage types on a skill is intended and I think very fine. Endgame requires the merging of those damage types but not for leveling. Unless you are new and/or going in blind…it usually isn’t an issue.
Chaos damage is fine…I think adding more rr to other classes would make it a tad bit too good. Just my opinion.
SoC is an absolute beast to level with. Once you get your hands on a Bonewall MI it can carry you to 100 as long as you cap res and focus on vit dmg and devo tree.
Typically I want to level with the end game skills. However it just isn’t feasible unless you want a hard time or a long slog. This was pointed out in a bleeding dmg thread and trying to kill undead. Now I did a bleeding build from the beginning since that thread and found that it is very doable (hard at times) if you make good choices in your masteries and devo tree. I did a dervish and only 1/2 of my masteries supported rr bleed and it is super meme and not finished but I can’t wait to try it in SR 60.
Also vitality based devotions and their conversion was also discussed in another thread. I stand by my statement not to nerf them but instead give other options to sustain that don’t require vit conversion or hard to use clunky heals like dryad.
I think @Maya has a guide for leveling Pet’s from scratch and I am sure that there is a retal one somewhere.
There is so much info on the net for getting by these points that, like I said, unless you are going in blind and haven’t piloted a lot, you can get info you need to bypass these issues.